Can you believe ‘Do The Right Thing’ is 20 years old? The film’s promise of a United States of Black America was a nice fantasy. But now it’s time to welcome Sal back to the neighborhood.

Why Mookie Did the Wrong Thing
By Natalie Hopkinson

When Do the Right Thing was released 20 years ago, a generation of black writers and intellectuals became instantly radicalized by Spike Lee and Public Enemy’s vision of black America. Their fist-pumping black nationalist slingshots, along with The Autobiography of Malcolm X, were the perfect antidote for the isolation and alienation many black youth felt growing up in white suburbs in the post-civil rights era.

Together Do the Right Thing and Chuck D’s single “Fight the Power” made a pitch-perfect argument for a United States of Black America, composed of a constellation of urban outposts like Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, that were free of white patriarchy. USBA was a place where black people owned the restaurants, businesses and schools, and inhabited their own black worlds free of oppression. The film’s fiery conclusion, with the Italian-American Sal’s Famous Pizzeria going up in flames after the police murder of Radio Raheem, was the perfect denouement, a catharsis for every sleight at the hands of white people.

I was only 12 when the movie came out, but the film’s fire ignited my own smoldering resentments. Burn, white supremacists who harassed my family for daring to move to a white suburb of Indianapolis! Burn, cops who followed me and my teenage friends just because! The literal fire set in the film and the social fire that followed was payback for my black classmates who rode deseg buses from the inner city to suburban schools, leading to inevitable culture clashes that we would never win.

The satisfaction that came from that released rage played out for years. I remember a similar feeling just after Los Angeles police officers were acquitted in the videotaped Rodney King beating, when my friend Nzinga, a Black Panther’s daughter, announced with relish outside our high school lockers: “Niggas is rioting in L.A.”

Uuuuunnmph! Take that, we thought.

Do the Right Thing is still a powerful movie. But today many of the scenes that elicited cheers seem off the mark.

For the rest of the story, click here.

Today’s video of the day comes from Denmark, where a martial arts “expert” promises to break a rack of coconuts in a minute. Let’s just say the coconuts’ kung-fu was stronger!

(Shout out to UptownNotes.com for the link)

Today is the 144 anniversary of Juneteenth, the annual celebration of Black freedom.

Even though the Emancipation Proclamation declared the official end of slavery on January 1, 1863, most enslaved Africans in America did not find out until much later. Among the last to find out were slaves in Galveston, Texas who did not learn of their freedom until Union soldiers marched into town on June 19, 1865.

Upon hearing the news, Black people celebrated by laughing, crying, praying, and dancing in the streets for days.

Although Juneteenth is only officially recognized as a holiday in the state of Texas, people throughout the country use the day to honor the Black freedom struggle.

Let us use this day to reflect upon and give thanks for the freedoms that we have. Also, let us renew our commitment to fight against the various forms of unfreedom that undermine all of our prosperity.

May the ancestors be pleased with us.

GM — G.O.N.E.?
By Mumia Abu-Jamal
[col. writ. 6/7/09]

Having entered bankruptcy court (even a so-called ’structural’ bankruptcy), General Motors (GM) is making history.  It was once the titanic behemoth of American business, making more money than any other business.

In 2006, GM reported revenues of $207 billion dollars — yet profits were negative (-$1.9 billion).

As we know, even a titanic can sink.

Three years ago, GM was the third largest U.S. corporation in revenues; but today it has been de-listed from the Dow Jones Industrial Average, as its stock price fell below a dollar a share.

Now, the U.S. government is loaning new billions to GM, totaling almost $50 billion in taxpayer dollars, without any assurance that it’ll be repaid.

GM was the nation’s largest automaker, manufacturing Chevrolet, Pontiac, Cadillac, Buick, Saab and Saturn.  Some models are being discontinued, while others will be sold.  They also made the Hummer, a gas-guzzling SUV that has reportedly been sold to a Chinese manufacturer.

Critics in Congress and in the corporate media have blamed GM’s problems on their payroll and so-called “legacy” costs, meaning benefits for retirees.

Even after the crumbling of the business model, the anti-union animus of such critics remains a central concern of the political and propaganda elites, many of whom praised NAFTA’s (North American Free Trade Agreement) passage as ‘good for business’, and therefore ‘good for America’.

But only a numbskull believes those on the assembly line designed or decided which kind of cars would be built or sold.

GM suffered from managerial myopia, which could not adapt to changing market conditions.

Thirty years ago, when the U.S. faced an oil crisis, small cars began to appear on the roads. As oil prices stabilized, U.S. car makers built fleets of SUV’s, which sold quite well to Americans who wanted the civilian equivalent of a tank in their garage.

But the gas crisis of 2007 put an end to that idea.

U.S. automakers couldn’t give these things away.

In the meantime, car makers in Korea and Japan, which built safe, affordable cars with extended warranties and polite customer services to Americans, are GM’s lunch.  Other Asian companies are joining the club.  India’s Tata Motors, makers of the cheapest car in the world (the $2,000 Nano) has just acquired Jaguar and Land Rover.

Being ‘too big to fail’ is a political judgment, not an economic one.

In classic capitalist theory, a business survives if it sells products, and makes a profit.

We are beyond that point now.

Politics may disguise the problem; but it can’t solve it.

–(c) ‘09 maj

{Note: Mr. Jamals’ newest book is: Jailhouse Lawyers: Prisoners vs. the U.S.A.
(San Fran.:City Lights Books, 2009) It uncovers the practice of often self-trained JLs, who fight for change in prisons across America.  It features a stirring forward by activist/scholar and prison abolitionist, Dr. Angela, Y. Davis. EMI: contact: www.citylights.com  or write: City Lights Publishers, 241 Columbus Ave., San Francisco, CA 94133

Here are some books that I’ve been (re)reading recently:

Black Men Can’t Shoot by Scott Brooks

Righteous Dopefiend by Philip Bourgois

Jesus and the Disinherited by Howard Thurman

Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons by Siegfried Engelmann

Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty by Dorothy Roberts

Run Toward Fear: New Poems and a Poet’s Handbook by Haki Madhubuti

Tia’s Diary/Deeper Than Rap: Clarity, Truth, and Exposure by Tiallondra Kemp